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COMFOCUS COMFOCUS project, funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme, aims to progress the EU food consumer science community by integrating key European research infrastructures in the inherently multidisciplinary field of food consumer science, in order to promote their optimal use and joint development.

Do not hesitate to submit your proposal right away!
COMFOCUS is offering early career researchers the opportunity to apply to a program with 67 research projects at nine institutes across Europe. Within these projects, you will conduct research in your area of interest and work together with other research teams. In the end you can publish the results of this study. Early career researchers are offered to choose one of the institutes and conduct experiments there using innovative technologies in the food consumer science field.

What exactly do we offer?
We are offering you access to eye-tracking, skin conductance, virtual and augmented reality - state-of-the-art equipment to enhance and develop your research. You will work closely with the responsible researcher at a chosen institute and will have technical and scientific support from experts to ensure a successful research project.

What can you benefit from?
- Free access to the research installations;
- Travel and subsidence are fully or largely covered;
- Being part of another research team;
- Enlarge your network;
- Being in touch with other early career researchers;
- You may become a COMFOCUS fellow and be connected to other COMFOCUS fellows who have used the COMFOCUS tooling’s;
- Get access to different datasets and create larger datasets using and sharing stimulus material and connecting variables;
Access to the COMFOCUS Knowledge Platform: discussion forum, library with harmonized measures and protocols and Toolbox;
- Access to tools and services developed in the coming years as well as access to consortium expertise and mentoring;
- Access to the Easy Questionnaire Tool part of the COMFOCUS toolbox
- an easy way for researchers to make questionnaires with harmonized measures on self-report.

How to apply?
Submit your application clicking on

Pre-conference COMFOCUS workshop "Enabling future-proof food consumer science: the role of BIG(ger) data from interlinking our efforts". | June, 13, 2023, Prague

The workshop was held as part of the pre-conference program of the International Food Marketing Research symposium Prague on June 13, 2023. It aimed to discuss the harmonization of measures and protocols in food consumer science (FCS) and its impact on research quality and creativity. The agenda of the workshop included three brief presentations and group discussions. The meeting started off with the topic of harmonization of measures in FCS and raised important questions about its impact on research quality and creativity .

A specific emphasis was on ensuring cross-cultural comparability and inter-linkaging of data in FCS. Another topic for discussion was cultural and other biases in the use of harmonized measures and protocols in FCS. The project members also emphasized the importance of considering these biases and their impact on research outcomes when implementing harmonization efforts. The meeting concluded with a recognition of the relevance and importance of harmonization in the field of food consumer science. However, the participants emphasized the need for flexibility and consideration of evolving concepts, cultural differences, and sub-cultural variations in order to ensure that measures remain relevant and reflective of current trends and perspectives.

Sharing best practices among food consumer science experts
The workshops “Sharing best practices among food consumer science experts” finally took place in three countries: Slovakia, Denmark and Spain.

The aim of the events was to hear the opinion about the project approach and get input to whether this approach makes sense or if things should be done differently, as well as to learn whether the harmonised protocols and measures would be helpful in participants’ research.

The project approach was shortly introduced by the project members during the meetings.

Discussions were devoted to harmonisation of measures and protocols, and also challenges in the COMFOCUS approach. Participants discussed data protection rules across countries. They also talked about the two main components of the harmonisation vision.

The COMFOCUS community was seen as relevant and the need to communicate even more about COMFOCUS and its developments was emphasised.

Mentoring could be an option to spread the COMFOCUS thinking and focus on data sharing, promoting the collaborative research mindset. This could be included in PhD training - ‘COMFOCUS Academy’ and be spread further beyond Europe to the other part of the world.

Nitra, Slovakia, April, 19th 2023

Workshops «Support of Open Call 2”
Two workshops recently took place in order to discuss the objectives and expected outcomes of the 2nd Open Call, and talk about COMFOCUS.

The project coordinator Machiel Reinders and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Slovak University of Agriculture Elena Horska led the discussions.

Machiel talked about COMFOCUS, its main objectives, and about building a community and data sharing in consumer science field.

Elena raised important questions about the Open Call 2, its goals and processes.

Participants were offered a guided tour of the state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, showcasing the tools and equipment available for conducting consumer research experiments.

Available emerging technologies of each research laboratory were introduced by a responsible representative. There was also a discussion part, in which attendees of the workshops could ask their questions. Communication was fruitful and full of interesting insights and important suggestions.

The aim of the workshop was to demonstrate the novel toolings that COMFOCUS has been developing and define whether these developments will be beneficial for food consumer science ecosystem.

Participants were shortly introduced what COMFOCUS is aiming to achieve and its perspective for the food consumer science scientists.

They were also presented a demo on the toolbox and its base in terms of functionality for the present moment: a researcher can create a custom questionnaire, and a typical questionnaire with the Easy Questionnaire Tool (EQT). The completed questionnaire data is returned into the Knowledge Base, after which Knowledge Base analysis options are explained.

The COMFOCUS toolbox will offer the added value of the Knowledge Base and harmonization: it will allow to reuse data from previous experiments. After the general part of the workshop, there was a discussion with the market research agencies on making those scripts for their own tools, how much work this can take and whether they find it interesting enough to further proceed with this.

The civic engagement workshops recently took place in Italy, UK, Spain, Slovakia and Denmark
Read more about our recent activities here

COMFOCUS seeks to develop a digital platform that links food consumer data across Europe. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, the use of food consumer data is possible under two conditions: either through the explicit consent of the research participant whose data is being used, or if its use is for “public benefit”. Despite the significance that the consideration of public benefit has in defining how consumer data is used, there is limited understanding of how the publics conceptualise “public benefit” in the context of food consumer data, much of which has been studied using simple survey methodology.
Read the whole article

Q&A session to support the Open Call 2

On August, 8th 2023 you will be able to join a session on the Open Call 2! We will guide you through our research facilities where you, as an early career researcher, will be able to conduct research using innovative technologies, such as eye-tracking, skin conductance, and make use of state-of-the-art virtual reality equipment.

Our respectable project members will also reply to your questions that you might already have.

The Q&A session will be held on 8th of August, 2023, 10-30 – 11-30 CET.

To register for the session please click here.

See you soon!

Summer schools

Four summer schools-type training courses will be held for small groups of potential users. They will be held at the university partners.
Topics will include: General introduction to consumer science, hands-on training at consumer science harmonized measurements, protocols and guidelines for use of infrastructures and dedicated installations. Furthermore, basic insight in data models and methods of creating meta data, use of guidelines, raw data acquisition and processing data pipelines. Also, the use of data science on harmonized datasets will be demonstrated providing practical training on use of the COMFOCUS toolbox.
More details soon.

D6.3 Guideline for measuring food choice behaviour in reconstructed and virtual environments
Please check the project deliverables

www.comfocus.eu
Info@comfocus.eu

COMFOCUS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement nº 101005259. The website represents the view of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility: it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA). The European Commission and the Agency do not accept responsibility for the use that may be made of the information it contains.